I Don’t Want To Be

Sometimes I Long For A Convent Cell, With The Sublime Wisdom Of Centuries Set Out On Bookshelves All Along The Wall And A View Across The Cornfields--there Must Be Cornfields And They Must Wave In The Breeze--and There I Would Immerse Myself In The Wisdom Of The Ages And In Myself. Then I Might Perhaps Find Peace And Clarity. But That Would Be No Great Feat. It Is Right Here, In This Very Place, In The Here And The Now, That I Must Find Them.

That I Should Die Next Week, I Would Still Be Able To Sit At My Desk All Week And Study With Perfect Equanimity, For I Know Now That Life And Death Make A Meaningful Whole.

I Know And Share The Many Sorrows A Human Being Can Experience, But I Do Not Cling To Them; They Pass Through Me, Like Life Itself, As A Broad Eternal Stream...and Life Continues.

We Human Beings Cause Monstrous Conditions, But Precisely Because We Cause Them We Soon Learn To Adapt Ourselves To Them. Only If We Become Such That We Can No Longer Adapt Ourselves, Only If, Deep Inside, We Rebel Against Every Kind Of Evil, Will We Be Able To Put A Stop To It. ... While Everything Within Us Does Not Yet Scream Out In Protest, So Long Will We Find Ways Of Adapting Ourselves, And The Horrors Will Continue.

Despite Everything, Life Is Full Of Beauty And Meaning.